


Down the List

by ambivalentangst



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, BAMF Pepper Potts, Gen, Identity Reveal, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie) Spoilers, Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 17:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19772614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambivalentangst/pseuds/ambivalentangst
Summary: There’s an order to these things, as Liz knows. She’s good at organizing, looking at a problem and breaking it down to the bits and pieces of what needs to be done and, furthermore, who would be best for the job, so when she sees the video, she lays out a plan for what she's going to do about it.





	Down the List

There’s an order to these things, as Liz knows. She’s good at organizing, looking at a problem and breaking it down to the bits and pieces of what needs to be done and, furthermore, who would be best to do it, so when she sees the video, item number one is to sit down for a second. Item number two is to cry.  


After she’s run from school—her new school in Oregon where maybe people are more polite about it but everyone _knows_ , where she was just getting settled in when she Blipped—she flops onto her bed and buries her face in her favorite pillow.

 _“You don’t deserve this,”_ he’d told her.  


She comes up a half hour later with puffy, red eyes for a cold glass of milk.

Having a meltdown shouldn’t be split into two items if she’s trying to be efficient, she thinks and reframes the beginning of her order.

_Item number one: freak out_

_Item number two: think rationally_

There are a lot of things running through her head, like the face Peter made when he saw her at the dance— _god, and she thought it was a shovel talk_ —to Ned that day in the gym— _“Peter knows Spider-Man!”_

(Ned’s a good friend, she decides through the muck of it all.)

While she’s still trying to figure out item number two, Liz’s phone rings—her mom, who’s doing a late shift at the hospital.

“Sweetheart, there’s this video going around and—”

“I’ve seen,” Liz says. “I’ll call you back later, okay?” she adds, only kind of meaning it.

Is Peter a murderer, she asks herself. Before coming to a conclusion, she watches the guy’s—Mysterio’s—video again. 

(She has to say, he couldn’t have picked a less threatening picture to use to frame him for murder.)

Weighing the terrible glitch effect with how she saw him hold his aunt when they got back from D.C., she decides no, he isn’t.

_Item number three: prove it_

She paces around her kitchen, milk long gone. Everyone who didn’t have a panic attack in the middle of the school day would be home by now. It’s inching towards dinner time, but Liz isn’t hungry. “Think, think, think,” she mutters to herself. She wouldn’t have taken a _murderer_ to homecoming—there’s no TED Talk for that, besides—but next to nobody knows that right now except for her.

The lightbulb goes off: _homecoming_. As a result, she does end up calling her mom back.

“I’m going to see Dad,” she tells her, proud to hear her voice sound not half as frenzied as her mind.

“What? Honey, that’s all the way in New York, and—”

“Peter’s in New York, and whatever _Mysterio_ has to say about him, he’s wrong.”

“ _What?_ Liz, honey, wait for me to come home. Let’s talk about this.”

“I’m going to use the points we have saved up for the flight, same for a hotel,” she continues because maybe she is organized, maybe everyone who meets her tells her how she’s so _mature_ , but at the end of the day, Liz is a teenager on a mission. “I’ve got it all figured out, and I’ll keep you updated, okay?”

“Elizabeth Marie Allan, don’t you dare step out that door—”

“I love you,” Liz blurts and hangs up before she can lose her nerve, wrist deep in soon-to-be-wrinkled clothes she’s shoving into her suitcase.

She’s one out of six hours through her flight and nearly done with her free cashews when it occurs to her that her father is in _prison_ , and Spider-Man’s identity has been leaked. 

Liz spends every waking second until visiting hours start the next day nauseous and pale, desperately hoping none of his fellow inmates have heard or at least made the connection between him and the vigilante that got him locked up, and when she sits in front of him the next day, she cries in relief.

“Gumdrop, gumdrop—what’s wrong? How’d you get here? Where’s your mom?”

She tries really, really hard to stifle her sobs, but it takes a minute or two.

Her lotion-soft hands are still wiping the tears from her own cheeks when she finally musters the energy to speak, ignoring his questions. “Spider-Man’s identity got leaked, and they’re saying he killed this guy—Mysterio.”

Liz stares at her father and watches his eyes go wide and then narrow. “Parker doesn’t have it in him to kill,” he says, and it’s his tone he uses—use _d_ , more accurately—to tell her _no, she can’t go to that party even if she promises she’s not going to drink_ or _she has to stay on the main floor when she has boys over, end of discussion_. It’s no nonsense and just shy of exasperated, like he’s tired of arguing a point that’s obvious to him.

She nods. “I believe you.” Her phone appears in her hand, its camera open. “And I think if I can show people what you have to say, they will too.”

It takes a while to wear him down.

_“Gumdrop, they’ll link it back to you two.”_

_“If I do this and the guys in here find out, I’m dead.”_

With what feels like a thousand promises to be careful with where the footage ends up and no small amount of reiterating that Peter _needs_ him, and what’s more, he’s the only reason she didn’t die that day in the Monument, Liz has a video of her father saying Peter Parker— _Spider-Man_ —saved his life the same night he sent him to prison.

_“My name is Adrian Toomes. I fought Spider-Man knowing he was Peter Parker, and I’m still alive to say it.”_

It’s everything Liz can offer to help, something to pose the question _if Peter was the type to kill his villains, why was the Vulture any different than Mysterio?_

Liz hasn’t had time to really be angry at Peter, to think about all the implications of her date ruining her life, but when she gets back to the hotel, she cries. She was going for a vote of confidence, not a story, and she’s blindsided by the reality that her dad almost didn’t come back from his so-called business trip.

On her phone, she has upwards of sixty missed calls from her mom. In the eighteen hours since she left the house, she’s texted her three times.

_The plane’s landed, and I’m off to the hotel._

_I’m at the hotel._

_I just got back from visiting Dad._

She feels bad, but she can’t risk being cowed into coming home, not now.

_Item number four: like, actually prove it_

It’s one thing to know she’s right, and it wouldn’t be all that hard to make the world see it too. It’s the not-getting-someone-she-loves-killed-in-the-process bit Liz is worried about.

A couple thousand miles away from where she started, Liz begins to pace again. Back in Oregon, she had her white noise machine playing to help her think. In the hotel, she turns on the TV to try and do the same, only to have the first thing pop up be the news.

Liz hasn’t bothered with the press surrounding the turn of events. She knows the truth, she knows Peter’s screwed, and she knows she can do something about it. That’s been her motive, hasn’t it, ever since she was little.

Nobody else was going to take charge of the group project, so she did. Nobody else was going to do a better job leading the AcaDec team, so she did. Nobody else was there, so Liz Allan made sure she was.

Pepper Potts—who didn’t take _Tony Stark’s_ last name when they apparently got married, how cool is that—is one of Liz’s role models because she sees herself in her. She knows the story of how an accountant for Stark Industries became the company’s CEO, and she knows the power of grinning and bearing it.

Pepper Potts is not even _close_ to grinning as her face appears on-screen, face tired but eyes so flinty and lips so red it doesn’t matter. “Regardless of any accusations he may be facing, Peter Parker is a minor and should be treated as such. The potential for legal action the Daily Bugle has opened itself up to is staggering and disgusting, and any news outlet found promoting the frankly slanderous narrative it’s selling will be prosecuted in turn.”

She’s still talking, but Liz doesn’t care.

(Well, she _does_ , but it’s been a long almost-day, and she’s got to get down to business.)

If there’s one thing Pepper Potts is, it’s classy, even when she’s tearing the media at large apart, and with that in mind, Liz is certain she’s the person to give the video to.

She turns to her suitcase and is pawing through it for anything at least a little formal—if she’s going to meet Pepper Potts, she’s going to be looking her best, damnit—when she sees a flash of yellow, which she grabs for on instinct. She feels like crying when she seizes it and finds her AcaDec jacket to be its source, a victim of Liz’s scramble to get the bare necessities and out of town before her mom could come home and stop her. _Stupid_ , is her first thought, but then she looks at it for a second longer and reconsiders.

 _Maybe not._ She is doing this for Peter, after all.

She ends up in front of Stark Tower—originally sold, it’s been bought back again essentially to honor it’s namesake—not a crease in her blazer, button-down, or skinny jeans thanks to the hotel-provided iron. In her hand, her phone feels hot, her knees weak.

Liz sucks in a breath to bolster herself and strides forward, thinking of the leadership book she read years ago.

_Tip: most people don’t like to be in charge. Act like you know what you’re doing, and they’ll make way._

It doesn’t feel like it should be this easy, but the sea of reporters blocking her path parts for her with only minimal shoving. She makes it to the front desk before she faces any true problem, and after arguing with the secretary for several minutes—

_“I need to speak with Pepper Potts.”_

_“Don’t we all, sweetheart.”_

—near the end of which she’s starting to seriously worry about being forcibly evicted from the building, outside, she hears the reporters explode into noise and watches a team of bodyguards cut through them.

It doesn’t take a Peter Parker to figure out who they’re protecting.

_“Mrs. Potts isn’t answering any more Spider-Man related questions at this point—”_

A head of strawberry blonde crests the steps leading to the Tower’s glass doors, and Liz is off like a shot across the lobby.

“Mrs. Potts!” she yells, already halfway to the elevator. “Mrs. Potts, please!”

Liz supposes it’s the adrenaline that gets her over to her in time, but no amount of chemical influx would’ve gotten her past the figure that places itself in her path. Liz squeaks as she runs into it and then looks up into the very angry eyes of one Harold Hogan.

“Um,” is all she can stutter, her false bravado dying with her forward momentum.

“No reporters allowed in the Tower,” the man snaps, and Liz kind of wants to curl up in a ball.

She didn’t really think item number four would bring her this close to being arrested.

“I’m not a reporter,” she manages after a moment, trying to look around him for Pepper. “I’m—um—a friend of Peter’s, and I have something that I think can—um—help, sir.”

“Mhmm, sure. I bet that camera of yours isn’t running right now, either. Kid only has two friends, and I’ve met them both. Get lost.”

Liz draws back in on herself. “I—no—”

“Give her a break, Happy. She’s got his school on her jacket.”

Liz is eighty percent sure she’s died and gone to heaven as Pepper Potts— _the_ Pepper Pots, who Liz never really thought she was going to get to meet, if she’s honest with herself—appears to her right, evidently tuning out the way her bodyguard is spluttering about how it could be a costume. “Ignore him. He’s—we’re _all_ a little stressed right now. You said you know Peter?”

“Yeah.” Liz is consciously working on taking steady breaths, trying to function knowing one of the most powerful women in the world is standing four feet in front of her. “I’m Adrian Toomes’ daughter.”

If possible, Happy, as Pepper called him—though Liz had a hard time understanding the nickname—looks even more thunderous than before. “Pepper, that’s the—”

“I know who it is,” she cuts him off, and Happy remains disgruntled. “Why don’t we talk upstairs?”

It’s not a suggestion, and Liz is suddenly aware of all the eyes parked just on the front lawn.

“Okay,” she agrees meekly, and then she is in an elevator with Pepper Potts and Stark Industries’ head of security.

There was nothing in her leadership book about this, nor on what do when they sit her down in the kitchen of the Tower’s living quarters, but Liz is good at paving her own way.

(Her mom would agree with that, though Liz hasn’t picked up any of the thirty additional calls she’s tried to make to give her the chance.)

She explains what she has, the delicacy of her situation and—with tears budding _again_ , which is the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to her since getting ditched by a sophomore on the dance floor—that she doesn’t even know if her dad’s okay since she saw him that morning.

“I can e-mail it to you if you want,” she finishes, throat tight. 

“That would be great,” Pepper replies kindly, and the message is off before Liz has even gotten up from her seat.

She thinks that’ll be the end of it, that it’s time for her to go back to her hotel room and finally let her mom ground her from the other side of the country, but Pepper Potts reaches across the table and squeezes her hand. “Tony and I had a daughter during the Blip,” she tells her, which is so out-of-the-blue, Liz doesn’t know where to go with it. Luckily, Pepper must sense that, and she continues before it can get awkward. “I hope she grows up to be like you.”

Later, Liz will text the group chat she still has with Michelle Jones and Betty Brant, informing them that she’s a) unexpectedly in town if they want to grab lunch and b) has Pepper Potts’ stamp of approval.

In the moment, her eyes get big, and she goes to stutter out some kind of thank you when she hears someone shuffling down the hallway.

“M’s. P’tts? W’s goin’ on?”

Liz visibly tenses, and she turns to see Peter Parker wandering in wearing some tourist-y shirt and, of all things, Hello Kitty pajama bottoms.

She remembers Peter being small, and that when he thinks no one’s watching, he gets even smaller, shoulders hunching, eyes falling to the ground. She’s reminded as he stands there in oversized clothes, clearly fresh out of bed despite it being nearly three in the afternoon.

She remembers Peter always being just a little sad despite his best efforts, unable to keep it out of his eyes, and she knows why.

(Rumors spread like wildfire, after all.)

_Orphan—Uncle—shot—_

She’s reminded as he stands there in a building named after a dead man he claimed to know.

When she’s thought about what Tony Stark left behind, she’d wondered about Peter—if he Blipped, if he missed him. Across the room, Peter looks at her like he’s just stepped in broken glass, and even if it weren’t for that, she thinks she’s found her answer in the way his eyes dart desperately to Happy and Pepper and then back to her.

It seems in the same second she processes what’s going on, he does too.

“Liz?” he all but whispers, just loud enough for her to hear.

She waves. “Hey.”

_“Whatever’s going on with you, I hope you figure it out.”_

“I get it now.”

His expression crumples right then and there, and Liz decides she’s had enough of seeing Peter upset—of seeing Peter at all, actually. She stands, pushing her stool in before things can devolve any further. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Potts. I hope it helps.”

She really just wants to leave without saying anything else to him, but he’s stumbling over more of the same apology he gave her all those years ago in the hall, the one she now understands with frightening clarity. She holds up a hand, and he stops. “Like I said, I get it.” She doesn’t _want_ to cry. As a matter of fact, she’s done enough crying in the past twenty-four hours for a long, _long_ time, and yet she still is left croaking out what serves as her goodbye. “And speaking as someone who’s had their life blow up in their face, it gets better.”

_Item number five: pull yourself back together_

The secretary gapes at her as she walks back outside and Ubers to her hotel. When she gets there, her mom yells herself hoarse, but Liz doesn’t regret it.

She didn’t want to see Peter, sure, couldn’t handle it, but on the bright side, she got to meet Pepper Potts, who gets her dad’s sentence reduced by fifteen years and guards stationed at his cell around the clock.

(Liz doesn’t know it yet, but when Adrian Toomes gets out, he’ll be under the protection of the SHIELD agents assigned to the rest of his family the very same day his daughter came forward with his statement.)

And it takes time, yes, for what she provided to become relevant in the lawsuits, but when it does—

_BREAKING: VULTURE VOUCHES FOR SPIDER-MAN_

_TOOMES’ TESTIMONY: PARKER IS A HERO_

_MYSTERIO VIDEO AN ILLUSION—VILLAIN-SIZED HOLES IN THE STORY_

—she decides she doesn’t mind the wait.

After all, there’s an order to these things, as Liz knows.


End file.
